News and views about the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and other legislation, schemes and policies impacting the Right to Education of India's Children.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

AP for reforms to make RTE effective

Teachers working in habitations having more than one
government school may have to take classes in other nearby schools in
future, if the reforms being mulled by the School Education Department
take shape into a policy.

It was one of a slew of
reforms being mooted by the department to make implementation of the
Right to Education (RTE) effective, Minister for Primary Education S.
Sailajanath stated here on Saturday. Review of policy changes that had
taken place over the last 20 years, keeping syllabus and textbooks
online allowing discussion and suggestions and providing textbooks in
native languages (in Telugu script) were also being thought of.

The
Minister reasoned that the inability of people in a locality to own up
the school was resulting in poor monitoring of the institution
ultimately resulting in poor quality of education imparted to the
children. Identifying the elements that were distancing schools from
local people was important in providing quality education, he noted.

Speaking
at a State-level consultation on the implementation of RTE, Dr.
Sailajanath said orders would be issued in a month’s time making
education of school management committee members’ children in the school
concerned compulsory to make locals own up the school. They were
thinking over rotating teachers between schools in a habitation as it
would help meet shortage of teachers.

The government
was finalising a system for arranging remedial classes after school
hours to make the children cope with the syllabus, the Minister said.
Setting up a parallel mechanism to mandal education officers (MEOs) to
monitor school was also on the anvil as appointing new MEOs was not
possible due to legal obstacles.

Representatives of several NGOs participating in the implementation of RTE made several suggestions at the meeting .